CHARLOTTE -- Premier member hospitals are experiencing savings in excess of $7.5 million with more savings to come as a result of the healthcare alliance’s innovative, industry-first “Best Practice Trays” (BPTs) – standardized surgery procedure packs with predetermined components that significantly reduce the cost of high-volume surgical procedure trays.

Premier members who have converted to BPTs are seeing real savings of as much as 30 percent – helping Premier members keep costs affordable to patients in communities they serve.

“Perhaps even more significant, the introduction of BPTs has triggered our members to determine if they are getting best value from their custom procedure trays,” said Mike Georgulis, Premier’s vice president of sourcing. “Many are evaluating not only each tray and whether it’s needed, but each component to determine which items should be kept and should be discarded. The result is sizeable savings even without switching to our BPTs.”

The new BPT agreements, effective in October 2006 with Cardinal Health of McGaw Park, Ill. and Medline Industries Inc. of Mundelein, Ill., provide alternatives to more expensive custom procedure trays. They lower surgical procedure costs by standardizing line items used in popular surgical packs.

“We are always searching for ways we can partner with our members to provide innovative solutions to common challenges,” said John Biggers, Premier’s group vice president of sourcing. “The made-to-order BPT strategy creates greater pricing discounts through voluntary commitment.” The agreements, which include clinical and physician preference products, are negotiated with existing Premier contracted suppliers.

A task force that included Premier alliance members as well as clinical and contracting staff collected and analyzed extensive usage and spend data on custom procedure trays to determine the packs and components that comprised the majority of Premier’s contract spend.

BPTs have significant annual spend and usage as well as a large number of top quality, pre-approved components. The selected pack subtypes and components were chosen based on Premier member usage data. The first BPTs include cystoscope, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, laparotomy, C-section, general minor, angiography, ortho-upper extremity, ortho-total hip, ortho-total knee, and ortho-knee arthroscopy packs.

About Premier, 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Serving 1,700 hospitals and more than 45,500 other healthcare sites, Premier is the largest healthcare alliance in the United States dedicated to improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier operates the nation's largest healthcare purchasing network, the most comprehensive repository of hospital clinical and financial information and one of the largest policy-holder owned, hospital professional liability risk-retention groups in healthcare. Headquartered in San Diego, Premier has offices in Charlotte, N.C. and Washington. For more information, visit www.premierinc.com.